Hey, Vulnerability. Let’s be Friends.

Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when you have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.

-Brené Brown

Okay, real quick let’s just talk about how many times I’ve tried to sit down and write this blog. Probably at least like ten different times over the course of the past four months, and up until this point, I have pretty much gotten nowhere. I haven’t really had true inspiration to write. I have, but it has been very scattered, leading me to become frustrated in the face of it all, causing me to shut my laptop and walk away from it hoping that something will come back to me on its own. Because that’s how things work, right? However, this isn’t the only place that I’ve felt these feelings.

I think a lot of my persistent frustrations in life come from a feeling of inadequacy, shutting the door on whatever it is, shutting it out, walking away, and only briefly touching on it again when I feel is appropriate. However, I’m not sure that’s the healthiest way to handle things. In fact, I’m pretty positive that it isn’t. And I’ve caught myself doing this in many aspects of life. Working on a new blog, learning or writing a new song, work, relationships, dealing with personal feelings. You name it; I can probably pinpoint a time that I have walked away from something in frustration. I’ve become so used to a newfound feeling of happiness and relief from constant stress, that with anything that suggests trouble, I want to immediately block it out. I want to resist an opportunity of being vulnerable, an opportunity to expose myself to feelings of failure, disappointment, feelings of not being ______ enough. Not being good enough, right enough, strong enough, confident enough, whatever it may be, those things still loom over my head. That was such a constant part of my thinking for the better portion of the past year and a half due to personal circumstances that I was in, that anything that wants to pose that on me again, I want to get rid of it.

But the reality of this is, I can’t actually do that. The reality of life is that I will always encounter things that challenge my thinking of self-worth, self-confidence, and happiness. And you will too. (But holla at ya girl if you’ve figured out the secret on how to avoid these things.) But what I’ve come to realize, is that the only way to work through these feelings, is to recognize them. Confront them as they come, and deal with them. I have the choice, I have the power over how I let a situation affect me, and the more power I give to these feelings of negative self worth and poor self esteem, the less power I have over my happiness and confidence. Which seems to make super obvious sense when I put it that way. But sometimes I don’t even realize that I’m giving them power. However, the more I run away from it, the more it looms. It leaves a heavy thought of the potential of failure because I left a thing half done. I didn’t finish it. I didn’t give it my all, and therefore, the possibility of failure hangs, simply because I don’t know how it ended. And through that, I am giving myself less power over my happiness, less potential of seeing something through, less potential of feeling a sense of relief. Maybe in the end all I’m looking for is a sense of relief. A sense of a clean ending, whether it’s a “happy ending” or not.

Still though, getting to that point is the challenging part. Sometimes, depending on what it is I’m trying to work through, it can take a pretty solid amount of time to really sift through all of the nasty, hard, feelings that make vulnerability and confrontation so difficult. But I’ll tell you what. Sometimes, yeah, it can take a long time to really get vulnerable with yourself, or with anyone else/any other situation. But sometimes you have to really give all that you can to a situation like that to really come out stronger on the other side. It isn’t glamorous by any means. Sometimes vulnerability, and the process of it, can be exhausting. It can sometimes take true dedication and commitment. And sometimes, all of that can be really difficult when thrown together at the same time. BUT, when all is said and done, sometimes it’s better to be on the other side of that anyway.

So now, let’s challenge ourselves to get vulnerable these next few weeks. Confront whatever we’re running from and see if it works itself out. Remember, give yourself time to work through it. Be friends with the vulnerability. Be forgiving with yourself. Be patient with yourself! (We’ve talked about that before!) It’s going to get hard. It’s going to challenge self-esteem, happiness, self worth, self-love, everything. But see it through, and even if it shows something that maybe you really didn’t want to feel, have, do, see, whatever, at least you saw it through. Now pat yourself on the back that you didn’t walk away in frustration, but rather pushed through to the end.

Also, random side note. I finally finished this blog after three months of working on it, and before posting, my brain goes “this is probably only my problem. No one will read this. No one will relate to it,” and then I almost erased the WHOLE THING. HELLO UGLY VULNERABILITY CHALLENGING MY SELF WORTH. It happens. It happened for four months writing this blog. But I did it, finally. Maybe this is my first step to overcoming my challenges with being vulnerable. And I’m using all of you as my witnesses to hold me accountable. People need other people. Remember?

So I don’t know, maybe you disagree, maybe it doesn’t make sense to you at all. I may even be wrong about all of it, but it’s just my view on it.